Have You Ordered Textbooks Yet?

I would love to get my orders to the bookstore in a timely fashion, but as a grad student I am usually assigned courses a few weeks before they start, making it an impossible feat without a time machine. All the schools where I’ve been an adjunct or a grad student have been the same way, though the quarter system at my current institution seems to exacerbate this. Usually, the courses must be fully enrolled before they are assigned, so there’s really no way to comply with the higher ed act Kevin mentions except to create universal syllabi with standard required texts for all courses.

Nice, Natalie! I used to place book orders within the specified deadline, and I always work hard to make sure that I’m using a book fully in a course if I’m asking students to purchase it. However, increasingly, students don’t buy the book (or they want me to give them a desk copy). It seems the bookstore assumes some students won’t purchase the book and the bookstore doesn’t order as many copies as I requested. Then students realize that I won’t give them a free copy and that we *will* use the book in the course. By this time, the bookstore doesn’t have enough copies of the book for all students who need one. There are delays. There are attempts at ordering from off-campus locations, but then there are financial aid concerns…. it just becomes a mess. THIS is why I tend to delay ordering. I know there are workarounds, but frankly: sometimes it just seems to be too much trouble.

Or…you could just tell your students which books you are using and let them find them (cheaper!) on amazon or through services like addall.com. Just saying that the campus book store isn’t the only game in town.

Thanks for this post, and for the great suggestion about disseminating the book information ahead of time on Blackboard. I’m going to do that for this next semester’s texts.

The Higher Ed Act has certainly complicated matters, and while to goal of arming students with the relevant information is laudable, the accelerated timetable does make life difficult, especially for classes assigned at the last minute.

I’m all about providing students with options; our primary demographic is first-generation, working-class students (many of whom are at least partially working their way through college), so this is an even more acute concern for me than it was at previous institutions where I taught.

I’ve been procrastinating submitting my textbook order mainly because I need to review the books I plan to use. Requesting and receiving a potential text from a publisher can take upward of two weeks, and if I choose not to use the book I have to deal with the hassle of returning it.

My solution: download potential textbooks to my Kindle, review them, and return them before the seven-day return deadline for a refund on Amazon. This way I don’t have to hassle with the publishers’ annoying “examination copy” policies.

I teach a fairly specialized subject, but every textbook I use is available online from both Amazon and B&N. The prices for new books are a good bit less than my university’s bookstore, and used copies are available. I email this information to my students well in advance of the first day so they can order online if they like. And it doesn’t bother me in the least that I’m “undercutting” the brick-and-mortar store — our bookstore is run by a private company under contract with the university, and it isn’t particularly responsive to the needs of faculty or students.

One other suggestion … books from an academic press are often much less expensive than books from specialized for-profit publishers. This is especially true for law-related books, but it may be true for other fields as well.

Thank you Natalie for writing a well-written article on getting book orders in and why it matters. As a college bookstore director, getting books on the shelf as reasonably priced as possible in a timely manner is my job. kevingannon is correct about the HEOA. It’s now the law and only the official campus store is required to follow this law. Off-campus stores, Amazon, etc. do not unless they are the official campus store. I’m cringing at the following statements; “One thing we found out early on, was that our college itself was making a large profit off of student textbook purchases.” Campus stores owned by the institution are making money off of all purchases. Shocker. Campus stores that are leased are also providing money back to the institution. Shocker. Where do you think building renovations, sponsorships, scholarships, etc. come from? When you send your students online to Amazon and the like to get their books, that money doesn’t go back to campus. Our campus store receives no appropriated money, pays its own bills and funds hundreds of thousands of dollars in building renovations, scholarships and other projects on campus the University and state cannot fund. If done correctly, your campus store is your best ally and will do everything they can to get you the materials you need to help your students be successful.

Cubbies -
First of all, I don’t fault the bookstore managers – they aren’t making these decisions. Until fairly recently, college bookstores were “break even” operations, whether owned by the college, or contracted out. After all, the students are already paying tuition and student fees. Yes, a college can get even more money by raising the bookstore prices to create another “profit stream,” but is it really right to siphon more money from our students? More and more students are finding that their financial aid won’t cover all their books, so they have to choose which ones to try to do without. These students also don’t have the option of going to Amazon.com or eBay, as their aid money doesn’t arrive early enough for them to do that.

I am considering giving my students the opportunity to negotiate some of what we cover in my fall political thought class so I am undecided about whether I will require that they purchase an anthology of readings or whether I will order a list of possible books for them to choose from. The downside to the former option is that they will need to lug a heavy book to class and the downside to the latter is that it will limit their options and also force them to buy books they might not need. The other option I have since all of the texts are in the public domain is to not order any texts and have them access them online. This is problematic because of the printing issue or they may be less likely read something not from the bookstore.

The sooner professors get their adoptions in, the sooner we can start shopping for our list online. The books online are cheaper if we get our adoptions in early. We can start searching our entire list for books that are below wholesale, but we usually set it at 35% of list and still get great results. Everything else after that, we go to wholesale or pub.

We use Bookvolume.com, its free online software made JUST for bookstores to be able to search online marketplaces like Amazon and Half for cheap books. The best deals we find are usually from early adoptions so we publicly thank our professors that adopt early and give them kudos for saving students money in the school newspaper.

Or has realized that perhaps, just maybe, there’s an election coming, and she wants to seem moderate (mayhap even tilting toward liberal?!) compared to people like Russell Pearce (he of the ‘anchor babies’ legislation). Oh, and don’t forget, the MLB All-Stars game is here in AZ this year…

Am I wrong to infer, from the CHE headline, that if I do not create an app the White House will sexually assault me?

This is a totally fine idea.  The difficulty is that most abusers don’t think of themselves as abusers.  I don’t know how many abusers would have the patience for the education/thinking needed to realize they are.  (“Hey! I’m one of the guys they’re talking about”).

Like every crime, the intended victim still needs to prevent it.  This is actually not a bad idea; sort of like a LoJack for your friend.  I totally would have done that (and maybe suggested it) for my female friends when I was an undergrad.

all of the above…. 

I think the idea is that when someone attacks you, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to call 911 until they’re done (presuming they leave you conscious). You picked up on this little fact.*

But if, for example (I’ll go ahead and offer an obvious design here) the app beeps every 5 minutes and makes you put in a code (one for “I’m good” and a different one for “call help”), and you either put in the “call help” code or else ignore it, it can send an SOS text to your designated “friends” with your location (from the built-in GPS).  Even this (fairly primitive) app would be about a million times better than what most students have now to keep themselves safe when they go out (or in) with someone. (Yes, I know: if the attacker were a little clever, (s)he would just smash the phone and defeat it; that’s why I called it “primitive.”)

BTW, I don’t see any reason why it’s reasonable to assume only female persons would benefit from or use such an app.  It seems, NOT theoretically, that the “director of multicultural efforts to end sexual assault” was actually being sexist in assuming that.

* Let’s not even get started on the Supreme Court decision that police cannot be blamed for failing to stop an attack in progress, even if they know about it. Let’s just say it’s campus police, and they’re not unionized, and they know the University president himself will fire them if they don’t stop an assault in progress.

Cool!  But you’d have to be able to give someone a “gift” module anonymously.  Some of these guys, I wouldn’t want them to know it was me…

I have a suggestion for an app. Well, not really an app, since it’s partly mechanical. It’s based on Angry Birds but in RL. When someone attempts to rape you, you pull out the gadget, and it throws a heavy bird-like leaden object at the would-be rapist, seriously damaging them to the point where they probably can’t continue trying to rape you.
It’s called a ‘gun’.

If only there was a small handheld device that they could carry, that could sent metal at high velocity into the vital organs of the women’s attackers…

Wrong: There’s a whole world of difference between a fully completed crime and an attempted one, especially for the would be victim. High velocity lead is a great way to achieve this.

The White House attempts to do something to solve a problem using technology that people have in their pockets, equally accessible to men and women, and your solution is to put more guns on the streets.  Fantastic.  Sadly you sound like those folks who have the same solution to every problem.  Economy too enemic, lower taxes! Country needs stimulus, lower taxes! Businesses leaving, lower taxes!

We’ve heard this before, and thankfully not many are buying.

@Mikeal Hallin: Yes, Gandhi and Mandela.  Two figures who no doubt would have wanted others to resort to violence with deadly weapons in advance of their aims. 

And by the way, I expect a cell phone with this app is a good deterrent, considering it’s much easier to obtain than a firearm, much easier to use, and much less likely to harm others.  It may be true that it won’t stop an attacker, but neither will a weapon without its proper use.

The best-case scenario for the app is that it starts the manhunt for the rapist faster, so there’s a bigger chance to catch him. It won’t do squat to actually protect the victim.

There are certainly a number of these groups. The White Ribbon Campaign is one. As for the far right, I certainly hope there wouldn’t be any negative response to the concept that real men don’t hit women or rape. I find that most men I talk to are in agreement with those statements: the real challenge is making them realize that men are wanted and needed in the conversation.

The real issue is that taxpayer dollars are spent — indeed SET  ASIDE — to perpetuate what has become the absolute worst educational environment in the US.  Standards are low, faculty performance is low, graduation rates are too high, load default rates are too high, graduates go unemployed.  We now encourage segregation…AGAIN!!?  If you want to find discrimination in all caps, go to an HBCU and watch how white students are treated.  Or, white faculty…hired in great numbers but with a revolving door….seldom tenured, usually treated like field slaves while the black faculty are treated like house slaves.

If you have not read it, get a copy of  UNCLE  TOM’S  CAMPUS (written in the 1960′s I believe).  What an accurate portrayal of life on an HBCU.

What about these presidents?  Here’s an example of how they play within the system:  Elizabeth City State’s chancellor was forced to resign (the official reason:  God told him it was time to move on to other challenges), and went to Edwaters College in FL.   In no time, the board of trustees tossed him out there.  Where did he go next?  To another college position.  Did any of these colleges thrive under his leadership?  Not at all.

The tragedy is that the US government continues to fund these schools which do nothing but waste the minds of thousands of black youth each year.